How to customize payment option in Square Online?

[scorch]

Hello, everyone. Recently I started using Popl for my business and love the ease of my clients being able to pay me with their choice of payment app including Square. So I am very interested in using a custom Square link for this purpose. However, due to the nature of my business, I do need the feature of having the customer input the dollar amounts themselves. The donation link would be perfect for this, but I do not like that the payments would be called a donation and that there is also a disclaimer that says the donation is not in exchange for goods or services because I am providing a service. What can I do? Will this feature become available at a later date?

Thank you.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi @scorch.  I think the functionality you seek can be found in Square Checkout Links.  See screen shot circled area below, showing all of the things you can offer through checkout links.  Here’s a link to the Square Getting Started document on the subject.  Take the time to review it, and let me know if you have any further questions.

Best,

[scorch]

Hi! Those options would work great if I didn't have to set a payment amount. I need to have the customers enter their own payment amounts without the disclaimer that it is considered a donation not in exchange of any goods or services because I am providing a service.

Thank you.

[TheRealChipA]

I understand.  I’m still thinking of other options.  But I need to ask.  Exactly what is it that you do?  I ask because I’m not sure that what you do or are looking for is in accordance with Square’s TOS and I don’t want to suggest something that would cause you to have future problems.  Can you explain your business model?

[scorch]

  It is a pedicab business. The price of each pedicab fare can vary greatly and It's generally a big waste of time for us to wait on the side of the street for the customer to make a payment with their credit card. I'd like to decrease that as much as possible and have everyone be able to do everything much easier through Popl.

[TheRealChipA]

I totally understand.  I’m afraid that I might not be able to suggest anything that would help, but Square has made some interesting changes lately that I haven’t really explored or used.  Let me see if I can find anything that might work for you.  Most likely, it will be something so obvious that I’ll end up kicking myself! LOL

[scorch]

I would also like to know what is the purpose of that disclaimer that the donation is not an exchange for goods or services? And also what terms of service would you be concerned about here?

Thank you.

[TheRealChipA]

@scorch 

The disclaimer?  That is actually a legal disclaimer for donations.  Otherwise sellers would get tangled up in needing to provide valuations of values of goods or services for donations, etc.  There are some pretty strict IRS guidelines surrounding how much of a donation is actually a deductible donation if goods or services are involved, and this just makes the whole donation thing simple and straightforward.  Trust me, it has a very good purpose.

TOS concerns?  Nothing, really.  Square has some reasonable guidelines surrounding long-term pre-payments, cash adancing and other financial transactions, person-to-person transfers that are not in exchange for something like goods/services, and such that could cause problems, but this is not the case with you.  I just wanted to be sure.

Otherwise, I found the roadblock/gotcha in your situation.  Payment links — which you would have to use in your POPL integration, I think, do not work with variable-priced items.  And there is absolutely no workaround for that through Square.  Variable-priced items ONLY work at POS and nowhere else.

I have one possible solution for you.  You might be able to use a tool like Zapier to link POPL to Square.  You could then have the customer enter the amount in a Zap which would then “call” Square to process the payment for that amount.  And, if not Zapier, a service called Jotform certainly would work.  It integrates with Square for payment processing, and you can create a form for the customer to enter their amount and then pay using the Square integration.

I believe that one of those options would work for you, and I’d recommend starting with Jotform.

Let me know if you have any other questions.